Ethylene is a very important chemical, which does not occur in nature but still represents the organic chemicals consumed in the greater quantity worldwide. It is mainly the raw material for a large no of industrial products, such as poly-ethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene, polyester etc. Despite of the economic uncertainty around the petrochemical industry, ethylene production and consumption scenario are expected to grow continuously. The global demand of ethylene is over 140 million tons per year with the future growth rate of 3.5% per year (www.technip.com/sites/default/files/technip/publications/attachments/-Ethylene_production_1.pdf). Industrially, ethylene is produced by steam cracking of ethane; reactors have to plug into a firebox as the cracking of ethane is endothermic in nature. In standard condition a steam cracker can achieve up to 60% of ethane conversion with maximum 80% ethylene selectivity. However, oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) is one of the alternative processes mainly known. Since, oxidative dehydrogenation is exothermic so the reaction goes automatically as the catalyst is light off. While, ODH can offers high conversion with high ethylene selectivity, minimizing the contact time in milliseconds.
In this context, oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) will have the clear future to replace steam cracker to produce ethylene. Although many researcher has reported oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane in resent past, but poor atom efficiency (called E-factor by R A Sheldon in Chemistry & Industry, 6 Jan. 1997, P 13) in respect to both conversion and selectivity restrict the successful commercialization of ODH process. Moreover, the use of pure oxygen in ODH process makes the process cost high; hence to deploy ODH reactor industry must put a costly gas separation tower first. In this context catalytic dehydrogenation is another possibility to replace the existing processes of ethylene production, as it can deliver ≧80% ethane conversion with ≧90% ethylene conversion. Uses of solid nanocrystalline metal oxides catalyst are very important as they offer larger active surface area with option to reuse.
There are many reports on the dehydration as well as oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of ethane over different solid catalyst, but to the best of our knowledge there is no reference available that can offer such atom efficiency for a prolonged reaction time.
Reference can be made to European patent EP 2165997 A1, 2010 wherein Han et al. provided a novel one step catalytic process of oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane for the production of ethylene and carbon dioxide using pure oxygen over Fe-manganese oxide or Fe—CaCO3 catalyst. But use of pure oxygen at a temperature≧600° C. is very much painful, because above 600° C., thermal cracking will come into effect. So use of pure oxygen at above 600° C. makes the process cost higher and unfavourable for commercialization.
Reference can be made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,250,346, 1981 by Young et al. In their patent application, they claimed gas phase oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane in presence or absence of H2O2 over mix-Molybdenum oxide catalyst (Moa Xb Yc) (where X═Cr, Mn, Nb, Ta, Ti, V, W and Y═Bi, Ce, Co, Cu, Fe, Mg, K, Ni, P etc.) at ≦500° C. The drawbacks of this process are the low conversion of butane (only 2 to 8% of ethane conversion was claimed) although the process operates at 1-30 atmosphere pressure. Again, the use of H2O rise the question of metal leaching from the solid catalyst, leads to rapid deactivation of catalyst.
Reference can be made to the article AIChE journal, 1997, 43, 1545-1550 in which Choudhary et al. studied non-catalytic thermal cracking of ethane in presence of oxygen in a space velocity of 2000-11000 h−1. But, the conversion of ethane is only 44.2% whereas in absence of oxygen is further decreases to 28.5%. Moreover, the selectivity of ethylene goes down as the side reaction product (such as CH4, C3H6, C3H8 etc.) are predominates at 800° C.
Reference can be made to the U.S. Pat. No. 4,524,236 by McCain et al. in which they developed one step low temperature oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to produce ethylene over mixed oxide catalyst with 1:1.2 oxygen to ethane as feed. The main drawback of the process is the low space velocity, loss of selectivity (about 11% selectivity decreased as the conversion goes up from 53% to 76%). The low space velocity makes the industrial difficult, as the industry need process which can give steady conversion and selectivity in a high space velocity in order to cut down the production cost.
Reference can be made to the J. Catal., 2010, 270, 67-75 wherein Lemoniou et al. reported low temperature oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene over Ni—Me—O (where Me is the doped metal) as catalyst. Under the reported process 46% ethylene yield at 400° C. has been achieved with Ni—Nb—O catalyst.
Reference may also be made to Chem. Comm., 2003, 18, 2294-2295, in which partial oxidation of ethane was carried out via bromination followed by reaction with mix metal oxide. A product selectivity of ≧80% was achieved over Co2O4:ZrO2 catalyst. But main drawback is the use of bromine and double stage reactor setup to achieve such high product selectivity.
Another reference can be made to Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 2011, 50, 8438-8442, by Leclerc et al. on the ODH of ethane over platinum catalyst. Wherein, silica supported platinum catalyst demonstrate the highest conversion of 76% with ethylene yield of 46% at 900° C. with C2H6/O2 ratio of 1.5.